Tuscaloosa, AL Environmental Rules: Stormwater Management (2026)

Adopted by Ord. No. 6572 in 2004 and expanded by Ord. No. 8258 in 2015, Article IX implements the EPA's NPDES Stormwater Phase II program under the Clean Water Act, requiring the city's small MS4 to run six minimum control measures: public education, public participation, illicit discharge detection and elimination, construction-site runoff control, post-construction runoff control, and municipal good housekeeping. Sec. 21-152 flatly prohibits any "illicit discharge," meaning anything added to the MS4 that is not entirely stormwater, while expressly exempting routine flows like water-line flushing, landscape irrigation, foundation and footing drains, air conditioning condensate, individual residential car washing, and firefighting discharges.

The city does not issue its own separate stormwater discharge permit because ADEM already runs the NPDES permit program; instead, every land development permit or subdivision plan submitted to the city engineer must include a copy of the site's proposed ADEM notice of registration, and facilities must be designed to the standards in the Alabama Handbook for Erosion Control, Sediment Control, and Stormwater Management on Construction Sites and Urban Areas. The city engineer inspects during the subdivision, site-development, or building-inspection process, in response to citizen complaints or council requests, or by tracing a downstream pollutant back to its source, and separately inspects low-impact-development, green-infrastructure, and detention-pond features after construction to confirm they still function.

Isolated violations are typically resolved through the permitting and inspection process itself, while repeated or gross violations, or those the normal process cannot fix, are punished as a Code violation under Code of Ala. 1975 § 11-45-9.